Originally published 2021-09-01.
In late August 2021, two weeks after the Taliban took Kabul, a short clip from an Afghan television studio spread around the world. It showed a presenter seated at a desk while a group of armed Taliban fighters, several holding rifles, stood directly behind him. Speaking calmly to camera, he discussed the collapse of President Ashraf Ghani's government and relayed the message that Afghans should not be afraid of the Islamic Emirate, the name the Taliban use for their state. BBC journalist Yalda Hakim shared the footage on 29 August, calling it surreal.
Whether the presenter was told exactly what to say has never been confirmed. But the picture itself, a news programme with gunmen standing over the host, captured how quickly Afghanistan's lively media scene had been put under pressure. Here is what the clip shows, the context around it and what happened to Afghan media afterwards.
What the video shows
The viral clip lasts well under a minute and reportedly passed a million views within a day or two. The presenter does not look at the men behind him. Hakim described the scene as what a political debate now looked like on Afghan TV, with Taliban foot soldiers watching over the host.
Journalist Kian Sharifi, who follows Afghan media closely, noted that the programme was called Pardaz and that a longer version of the footage showed the presenter interviewing a Taliban member who appeared to outrank the others in the studio. Part of the discussion switched from Dari to Pashto, the two main languages of the country.
Afghanistan TV - surreal
— Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) August 29, 2021
This is what a political debate now looks like on Afghan TV, Taliban foot soldiers watching over the host. The presenter talks about the collapse of the Ghani govt & says the Islamic Emirate says the Afghan people should not to be afraid #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/oEverVgLOE
Coercion or staging?
Many viewers were quick to read fear in the presenter's face. Some social media users claimed that fighters had stormed the station and demanded that the host praise the takeover. No reliable outlet confirmed that account, and the station did not publicly describe what had been arranged off camera.
What can be said with confidence is that the setting itself sent a message. Even if nobody issued explicit orders, a journalist interviewing armed men who now control the country, with their colleagues standing behind him, is not working freely. Many commentators compared the footage to a hostage video.
Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad shared the clip with a pointed comment, writing that the presenter looked petrified and adding: "Taliban itself is synonymous with fear in the minds of millions."
How the Taliban returned to power
The clip makes more sense against the timeline of that summer. In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar, that set out the withdrawal of US and NATO forces in return for Taliban counter-terrorism commitments. The elected Afghan government was not a party to the deal.
As foreign troops left in 2021, the Taliban swept through provincial capitals far faster than most analysts had predicted. On 15 August they entered Kabul, and Ghani left the country the same day. The Taliban declared the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Between 14 and 30 August, more than 123,000 people were evacuated from Kabul airport, and the last US troops departed on 30 August, ending a war that had lasted almost twenty years. The studio clip was shared the day before that final departure.
Television under the first Taliban regime
When the Taliban first ruled most of Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, they banned television outright, along with most music, films and photographs of living beings. Girls were barred from school, women were largely confined to the home, and opponents faced harsh punishment, including public executions.
That history explains why the sight of Taliban fighters inside a TV studio was so striking. The movement that once smashed television sets was now appearing on screen to send its own messages.
Two decades of Afghan media growth
After 2001 Afghanistan developed one of the most open media landscapes in the region. Dozens of private TV channels and hundreds of radio stations were launched. Channels such as TOLOnews ran political talk shows, call-in programmes, music competitions and soap operas, and many presenters and reporters were women. For millions of people, especially in cities, television became the main source of news and entertainment.
That growth came at a cost. Journalists were regularly threatened and killed by the Taliban and other armed groups throughout the 2010s, and Afghanistan was ranked among the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters.
What happened to Afghan media next
The fears raised by the clip proved largely justified. In the weeks after the takeover, local stations dropped much foreign and entertainment programming, and state broadcasters mostly carried Taliban statements and religious content. Female journalists began to be removed from their jobs. A TOLOnews cameraman was beaten by Taliban fighters while covering the fall of Kabul.
TOLOnews kept some women on air, but only under conditions such as Taliban-approved dress and curtains separating men and women in the studio. In March 2022 gunmen raided its Kabul studio and detained three employees, who were later released. The arrests were believed to be linked to a report about a ban on foreign television series. Many other outlets closed, and large numbers of journalists left the country.
The clip of a presenter speaking under the gaze of armed men turned out to be an early, vivid snapshot of that wider change. It remains one of the clearest visual records of the moment when Afghan journalism moved from relative freedom to working under the watch of the people it was supposed to report on.
Sources: Yalda Hakim (BBC) on X, 29 August 2021 (original video); Deccan Herald, 30 August 2021; Daily Mail, August 2021 (original report); Wikipedia: Fall of Kabul (2021); Wikipedia: TOLOnews.
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